


covered in the colors

by oh-rileywilliams (scrxamitout)



Series: clean (we are the tigers au) [1]
Category: We Are The Tigers - Allen
Genre: Alternate Universe - Auras, Canonical Character Death, F/F, No Dialogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:41:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26222800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scrxamitout/pseuds/oh-rileywilliams
Summary: Chess never lived without it, without the auras that followed everyone around.
Relationships: one sided Chess/Kate (We are the tigers)
Series: clean (we are the tigers au) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1910689
Comments: 3
Kudos: 16





	covered in the colors

**Author's Note:**

> hey! first WATT fic! it's unbeta'ed for now but whatever.

Ever since she could remember, the auras existed. Shining colors that followed people around and never changed, their pure expression — she would assume after years. But that was apparently something normal people did not know, or just weren’t aware of. Her parents never talked about the atmosphere that surrounded every person on earth.

_ (She mentions them once, when she is barely four. _

_ Chess asks quietly during the night why the pink light never stopped, never disappeared. _

_ Her mom laughs, and holds her nearer. She says to her dad that they have an imaginative kid. _

_ Her dad says she is smart, and might be a writer with her brains and creativity someday. _

_ But Chess knows she’s not creative.) _

The girl decides to never mention it again, to keep for herself; it’s easy, it works. She lets herself analyze the colors, read about them. Using multiple pencils and watercolors, carefully mixing them all. It starts like a game and becomes more important, becomes a part of her, like it always was.

Chess notices green, and it feels right. It’s a mix of the sunshine and the ocean, a mix of the happiness and sadness. Loud and quiet. It’s balanced, it’s natural, and she falls in love with it. It’s the color of the grass, of the plants and trees above her head. It gives her peace, love.

Before starting first grade she asks for a green backpack, and they oblige.

_ (She also asks for a pencil case. _

_ And a new shirt. _

_ And soon everything becomes green.) _

School is not her favorite place to be, it’s overwhelming. Too many colors, too many faces and names she has to remember.

Her classmates don’t give a second look to her. To already consider her weird, not prepared to fit in. Only a girl with black hair and friendly smile introduces herself as Reese, next to her, followed closer by a smaller redheaded girl with a hair bow, whose name is Riley.

_ (Orange was a pretty color; her dad was orange. It got really bright when he was enthusiastic, which was almost always. When Reese smiled it was warm, welcoming. It was happy. Energy radiating from her. Restless, sincere.) _

Riley is the first person she knows that doesn’t have an aura. And Chess wants to ask, but keeps to herself.

There’s nothing, and it feels like Chess is missing important information. It makes her weary, distrustful, until she remembers that neither does she. That she was also plainly nothing out of skin, no other detail or touch in her.

Maybe Riley was aware of the lights too, or maybe she knew something else. But that talk never comes up. They never tackle that issue, or any issue really. Because Chess never asks, and neither does the other girl. And they are never friends, they never say  _ hi _ when walking through the hallways.

However, it doesn’t matter.

_ (Chess’s mom signs her up for gymnastics, and she becomes friends with the team. _

_ It’s an escape, a way out of her secret, and she excels at it. The better she gets, the more time working on it, the less time paining, thinking about auras. It’s a way to turn it off, to stop thinking about it, to not care. _

_ To be normal.) _

A new girl joins school, her color is yellow, or not yellow but rather gold. She shines, she is the center of attention in any room. It is royal, imperial, important. And no one can take their eyes away from her. She’s sparkles, glitz and glamour. Courageous and passionate. And Riley is by her side, and they soon become inseparable.

Riley shines under Cairo’s light.

Reese evolves, from tiger to ginger to amber and clay. And it’s probably not only Riley’s fault, but everyone else. The way they spat their words at the girl and leave their marks on her light. Chess never helps, instead, she hides. She denies even noticing a problem, and it’s no more than some looks they give to each other.

_ (She wonders why Reese’s aura grows darker. _

_ Why, if it was not in her nature, was it turning against her? _

_ Turns out, there were things that a person could not tolerate, words and insults reaching too close to not change their essence. _

_ Maybe who everyone is, is not only nature, but the result of who mixes your colors, or who throws their darks at you. _

_ Maybe your pure expression can also be corrupted. _

_ Chess also wonders if her aura sticks on Reese’s.) _

Sometimes it leads to that, to ask herself and wonder. About herself, about how everyone perceived her. Was it the same for everyone else? Was she a color that she had yet to discover? Or was she just that, plain, broken, able to see but never be seen?

To her heart, she knows that she’s not amazing, she’s not outlandish or even a bit out of the ordinary.

She focuses on gymnastics, she works hard. Trains more than anyone else, surpasses herself every day. Becomes better, stronger, important.

And a part of her is left behind. A part of her humanity, of her thoughts and feelings, of colors and feels. She breaks slowly, so slowly that no one else notices, because they don’t have to. She hides in being the best, in being outstanding, and an echo of  _ the Olympics  _ sound in her trainer’s voice.

_ (She has hidden for longer than intended. _

_ Hiding more things can’t hurt anyone. _

_ Hopefully.) _

During sophomore year, a freshman joins gymnastics.

Her hair is short and black. Her skin looks like the porcelain tea set her mother has. But she’s wearing old, almost destroyed sneakers, and a black backpack hanging on her back. Chess can’t help but stare at her, she can’t stop herself but feel a craving need of talking, of knowing.

And her aura is strikingly emerald, almost a jewel. It goes all around her, making her look a bit paler and greenish, not in a sickening, but natural way. It’s vigorous, majestic, noble. Tender and juvenile. Brilliant but rather calm. Immature and serious at the same time. Young and full of life.

They quickly become friends, and sometimes looks last more than they should. The way their hands touch makes her jump a bit, like an electric shudder. Chess can’t help but secretly long to be in the right place with her. To be able to just live her life with the view of Kate.

_ (After all, green was always her favorite color.) _

It’s one of those things she never dares to say when she’s alive. That she thinks is completely out of touch with reality. So, she hides, she hides as she hides her power, she hides as she hides from Riley, she hides as she has always done.

She hides in her secret and in gymnastics, in being the best. The idea of failure becomes more than she can handle, so she pressures herself to her limits

Being out of it is easy, to not worry, to not keep.

To be able to walk freely and not be crazy like everyone makes her out to be. To stop the shining lights or just have way more of them. To destroy everything, she ever knew and every single piece of discipline she still kept on her body.

It’s the easy way out, but Chess can’t help it.

The drugs are strong and ruin everything in a way she doesn’t notice, it starts imperceptible, impossible to catch, so it doesn’t matter. It never does. And it consumes her from inside, eating parts of her life, ruining them before she knows.

It’s weak, and she’s out of it, and she stops consider the fact that she’s still living. She swears that it makes her feel better, feel alive, and then forgets how she made it to her room, and the math class from the next day, and how she got bruises, and that everyone knows about it and gymnastics are now over, and that she told everything to Kate.

_ (Or maybe, she doesn’t forget. _

_ But it’s easier to deny ever having a conversation about flashing bright lights around every human who was ever on earth. _

_ Because she can look high and not crazy. _

_ Because it would be the drugs and not her brain. _

_ Because it will mean she  _ asked _ for it. _

_ And not that she has no idea  _ why _ is it happening to her.) _

Everything is fine, until it’s not.

Annleigh was a soft pastel pink color, delicate and romantic. Her stepsister, Farrah, is small, smaller than she is. She’s also younger, a freshman. Some days she was lilac, some days she got corrupted to wine. But the purple shades were always around her. Farrah is small and young, delicate but aggressive. Sharp but Chess can’t help forget she is a child.

Chess sees indigo while the girl falls, and wonders if that’s the color of guilt.

After that, everything turns grey for days, or it was just the abstinence turning everything worse. She copes, and Kate is by her side. She’s now just pale, no green, but still warm. Kate maintains the jokes, and is good, it’s better that way.

The color green was hope. It was the promise of spring after winter, of flower reborning time and time again. Confidence, courage, optimism. It was nature and flora. It was the promise that a new day would come.

_ (But there were no colors now.) _

Chess can’t help but hate herself, hate how much pressure she had accidentally put on Kate. How much the younger girl had worried, and how sunken her eyes look at night when they stay up late because Chess can’t sleep.

Kate is the first person to get her aura back, and the older girl almost cries when she sees it.

But not even that is enough, and she falls again. She tries to remember that it’s for her knee, and just her knee. But it brings colors back, stronger and brighter. And after months without them, she can’t deny herself the need to get them back.

It was just in her nature.

So was hiding, so was failing. It was all her and no one else. Maybe that was the reason she never got an aura; she was always destined to hurt. To never be anything better. To never grow up from old habits.

The day her life ends, Kate goes to her house. Chess can’t help but dread the day, without an explanation — she won’t have to wait long for it. But still there’s something in the younger teenager, something in her black hair and her green shirt, about pale skin and emerald aura. There’s something so familiar, something Chess holds so dear to her heart.

_ (She even has Kate closer to her heart than she ever had her secret.) _

And then Kate leaves. She goes away after one last sentence.

“You had one person who believed in you.”

As Kate leaves, she knows. She somehow knows.

Which would be the end, which was going to be the last color she sees.

And it’s red, it’s her blood. It’s fire and blood, it’s dangerous and risky. It’s passion, leadership. Necessary. Basic. Primary. When Riley comes near her, she finally sees it. Shinning, sticking around the teenager like the blood on the knife. But it’s just a thin coat, one that is barely visible. One that no one could have noticed, not even her.

Because Riley shines in the night; the shades of red around her, matching her hair. And a part of her still looks like the girl Chess once knew, and another part she doesn’t recognize. Riley had concealed too many things about her, that it became impossible to understand who she really is.

But she’s red, blood and strength. Fire within her, and outside her. A pure expression of risk and hitches, of raw danger and pain.

Chess should’ve known that Riley not having an aspect was wrong, because ever since she could remember, the auras existed. Shining colors that followed people around and never changed, their pure expression — she would assume after years.

_ (Or after dying.) _

**Author's Note:**

> Come to say hi to my tumblr! @oh-boleyn


End file.
